Saturday, August 1, 2015

Mercury from China ends up in Oregon fish, driven across Pacific Ocean by high winds along with ozone and other pollutants. China emits more mercury than US, India, and Europe combined-The Oregonian, Nov. 2006, Discover Magazine, March 2011

.............. "The ozone on the West Coast in a few years will be controlled not by
California and Oregon," Schnell says."It will be controlled by China." The incoming pollution bucks a U.S. trend toward cleaner skies and
water...............Mercury is especially suited for long-distance travelbecause at the
smokestack in elemental form, it's insoluble. By the time it reaches the
West Coast, however, some of the mercury has transformed into a
reactive gaseous material that dissolves in Western Oregon's wet
climate. It washes into the river, where microbes convert it into a form
that further concentrates in fish................
Most of the mercury entering the Willamette comes from Oregon's
volcanic soil and from sediment churned up on the river bottom. But
Bruce Hope, senior environmental toxicologist of the Oregon Department
of Environmental Quality,estimates thatglobal sources beyond the
state's control contribute 18 percent --more than four times the share
from local air deposition. "If I made every local source go away, would I be able to eat the fish?" Hope asks. "Right now the answer is maybe.".......................Hope was struggling to account for all theWillamette's mercury
sourcesbefore he encountered Dan Jaffe, an atmospheric and
environmental chemistry professor at the University of Washington at
Bothell. Jaffe and other scientists were detecting Asian pollutants in
monitors atop Mount Bachelor and Cheeka Peak, on the Olympic Peninsula.Urban carcinogen levels ............ The monitors regularly record levels of airborne carcinogens
equivalent to those of a major city, says Staci Simonich, an Oregon
State University researcher. In April 2004, instruments mounted atop
Mount Bachelor's Summit Express ski lift intercepted an enormous Asian
plume laced with mercury and ozone. The fine-particle concentration hit
about 20 micrograms per cubic meter, compared with the federal
air-quality standard of an average 65 micrograms during a 24-hour
period..............
"The air we saw on that day was comparable to a moderately bad day in
Portland," says Jaffe. "When you consider that that air has traveled
thousands and thousands of miles, it's pretty amazing really." Jaffe
calculated that Asia emits 1,460 metric tons of mercury a year, twice as
much as previously thought...............
To be sure, concentrations of foreign pollutants in Oregon are
minimal compared with federal air-quality standards. On an average
spring day in the Northwest, the overall sulfate concentration reaches
just 0.72 micrograms per cubic meter, says Colette Heald, a University
of California at Berkeley researcher. About one-quarter of the average
sulfate level comes from Asia, Heald says................
But the DEQ's Hope realized that when fallout occurs across an area
as large as the Willamette's 11,500-square-mile watershed, low
concentrations add up. He identified the river's mercury sources for a
study published in the international journal Science of the Total
Environment."..................
"Because local enthropogenic emissions makerelatively smaller contributions to the Basinthan do persisent global sources (sources over which there is little, if any, possibility of local control),localized environmental management actions alonemay not be adequate to address mercury impacts within the Basin." [last sentence of abstract]
An assessment of anthropogenic source impacts on mercury cycling in the Willamette Basin, Oregon, USA-, Science of the Total Environment, 3/2006 ResearchGate.".................
(continuing):"Especially if China's share increases, Hope says,Oregon can do
little to reduce contamination of the river even by cracking down on
emissions, eliminating mercury from products and segregating waste.
"Because of foreign sources,the kinds of management changes that would
be acceptable wouldprobably not be enough to let us eat the fish." Oregon officials have warned since issuing a 2001 advisory that Willamette bass and pikeminnow bear unsafe mercury levels. ...................... Mercury acts on the central nervous system and can reduce mental
ability, making kids shy, irritable, and slow to learn, and causing
tremors and visual disturbances. Children under 7 should not eat more
than a single 4-ounce portion of nonmigrating fish every seven weeks,
while women of childbearing age should eat no more than one 8-ounce
portion a month...............
The DEQ has a mercury cleanup plan for the Willamette that will take
decades. But "you throw in the global contribution," says Dave Stone,
Oregon public health toxicologist, "and it does become that much more
complex." Oregon, which has 14 fish advisories for mercury, has not been
able to lift one........... Impact on cleanup............... The added mercury from abroad, coupled with Oregon's high natural
levels, could concentrate pressure on local emitters under the DEQ's
cleanup plan. Weyerhaeuser, for example, has more than 15 plants in the
watershed. "We're concerned to the extent that we have to do something
that won't matter," says Marv Lewallen, Weyerhaeuser Oregon
environmental affairs manager...............It's not just the Willamette that will be difficult to clean up
because ofmercury beyond local control.Scientists expected to find
patterns of mercury pollution from nearby factorieswhen they took
sediment samples beneath lakes near Bellingham, Wash., that contain fish
unsafe to eat.Instead, most of the industrial mercury came from global
sources. ...................
"Our best estimates indicate that there'smore mercury deposited in
this country from outside our borders than from inside our borders,"
says Richard Scheffe,U.S. Environmental Protection Agency senior
science adviser. Mercury is just one of the foreign pollutants that scientists are
tracking. At least one-third of California's fine particulate pollution
--known as aerosol --has floated across from Asia, says Steve Cliff, an
atmospheric scientist at the University of California at Davis. ......................"In May this year, almost all the fine aerosol present at Lake Tahoe
came from China," says Tom Cahill, a UC Davis emeritus professor of
atmospheric sciences. "So the haze that you see in spring at Crater Lake
or other remote areas is in fact Chinese in origin.".....................
Cliff says China's growing contribution will complicate U.S. efforts
to meet annual average emissions standards. "As you try to reduce
particulate pollution from local and regional sources, you're only
reducing to some background level," Cliff says. "The concern is that as
China continues to expand, that background level will only tend to
increase."A recent court decision raises the possibility that foreign firms
could be held liable for polluting the United States. A 9th U.S. Court
of Appeals panel ruled that Teck Cominco Ltd., a company that discharged
heavy metals and slag in the upper Columbia River in Canada, must pay
to clean up a downriver stretch in the United States......................Scientists are frustrated by a lack of data from Asia,where
factories often aren't required to report what they emit, says Richard
"Tony" VanCuren, a UC Davis applied-sciences researcher...................
One thing is certain, though, because of geography and wind:

"Mercury,
sulfates, ozone, black carbon, flu-laced desert dust. Even as America
tightens emission standards, the fast-growing economies of Asia are
filling the air with hazardous components that circumnavigate the
globe."

p. 1: "University of Washington
atmospheric chemist Dan Jaffe...and a new breed of global air detectives are
delivering a sobering message to policy makers everywhere: Carbon
dioxide, the predominant driver of global warming, is not the only
industrial by-product whose effects can be felt around the world.
Prevailing winds across the Pacific are pushing thousands of tons of
other contaminants—including mercury, sulfates, ozone, black carbon, and
desert dust—over the ocean each year. Some of this atmospheric junk
settles into the cold waters of the North Pacific, but much of it
eventually merges with the global air pollution pool that
circumnavigates the planet...............These contaminants are implicated in a
long list of health problems, including neurodegenerative disease,
cancer, emphysema, and perhaps even pandemics like avian flu.And when
wind and weather conditions are right, they reach North America within
days.Dust, ozone, and carbon can accumulate in valleys and basins, and
mercury can be pulled to earth through atmospheric sinks that deposit it
across large swaths of land..................Pollution and production have gone
hand in hand at least since the Industrial Revolution, and it is not
unusual for a developing nation to value economic growth over
environmental regulation. “Pollute first, clean up later” can be the
general attitude, ﻿says Jennifer Turner, director of the China
Environment Forum at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars.The intensity of the current changeis truly new, however.......................China
in particular stands out because of its sudden role as the world’s
factory, its enormous population, and the mass migration of that
population to urban centers; 350 million people, equivalent to the
entire U.S. population, will be moving to its cities over the next 10
years. China now emits more mercury than the United States, India, and
Europe combined. ....................“What’s different about China isthe scale and speed of
pollution and environmental degradation,” Turner says. “It’s like
nothing the world has ever seen.”"...